Sabian Symbols: Woods rich in autumn colouring

Scorpio 18 (17° - 18°)

SELF-TRANSFORMATIONWe can raise ourselves to the level where we are the ones who ​decide and determine what will occur

The cyclical nature of life is beautiful yet somewhat imposing; it gives no choice about whether winter is coming or not; yet for the truly free and realised being, even this is a choice. Options become available through self-determined creative mind that simply cannot be grasped as possibilities to an imprisoned mind. When we look out through our eyes we see nothing more or less than the prison we have constructed out of our repetitive expectations. The realised mind is free to change its expectations.

Rudhyar: A PATH THROUGH WOODS BRILLIANT WITH MULTICOLOURED SPLENDOUR

A path through woods brilliant with multicoloured splendour

Fulfilment

The fruit contains the seed

Our lives have stages that can often be understood better by looking at metaphors in Nature. Here we have the sense that a person's fulfilment comes in the autumn of their lives – when the richness of a colourful personality speaks of their ability to offer the fruits of their encounters.

The ultimate promise of life is achieved only through personal excellence, and the fullest experience of self. Personality is complex, and often seems self-contradictory. Yet when the time arrives, all the pieces fit in concert and create a tapestry that expresses one unified statement. When we find our highest degree of self-expression, then the diverse manifestations of our parts are brought together into genuine, optimal fruitage.

The resultant benefit of this level of synergy is so very much greater than perhaps we can imagine. We are rewarded for keeping alive all the many and varied aspects of our life and for not allowing anything potentially useful to go to waste. In time it is revealed that what at first seemed unconnected later begins to resonate. With the resultant harmony of resources and understandings more of life can be experienced in satisfying depth.

Each of us has the possibility to gain success in one of several different fields of interest. The true achievement, however, is to master several, and gain the real attainment – not only of multiple strings to the bow, but the higher dimension of awareness that can synthesise them into one unique skill set. This is the springboard from which we launch ourselves into our greatest creative expression; this is our life message and only we can deliver it; it is our life purpose.

A truly realised person’s later years are graced with a kaleidoscope of fine qualities – experience, patience, wisdom, serenity, understanding, authority and gravitas – these are all qualities that require time to perfect. The exaltation of a forest is seen in the autumn, notwithstanding its year-round beauty. This is because the fruit of any dynamic living system contains its seed, and taken together they demonstrate the full circle of life in its fullest glory.

It is Nature’s high ministry of service to every living thing – that continuance is its primary goal, with the implicit promise that evolution will naturally occur. Any potential, when its ideal is realised, will align with this dramatised form of the order and beauty of the universe.

We have but to pass on our seed and all the illimitable resources of the universe are at hand to carry the best of us forward to contribute to the greater magnificence of all that is. Our best contribution to the collective beauty of our species is whatever is the best of us. We are not required to be other than who we are and aspire to another’s standards. It is for the fir to be green when the oak sheds its leaves, and for the oak to stand firm when the willow sways in the high wind. Each thing struggles and strains to become the best version of itself and trusts that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts, as in an autumnal forest.